Page 17 of Witch of My Heart

I wanted him to feel special – like the center of the universe even. He’d already been the center of my universe for almost an hour.

“That was a lie,” he laughed, still holding onto my hand. “I have a nose. I can smell when you lie to me.”

“The real answer is a long story that I’m not talking about out here where the trees have ears,” I said.

“Now you sound like Starry,” Cord rolled his eyes.

“Who sounds like Starry?” Duke arrived carrying several to go boxes piled up on his arms.

“Blithe does,” Cord said.

“Cord, this is my cousin, Duke,” I introduced him.

“Hi,” Cord said, but didn’t look at him.

“Where do you want me to put the food?” Duke asked.

“Ummm……” Cord said, looking from me to him.

“It’s for you too,” I assured him. “Do you want to go back to the meeting hall so we’re in a public place?”

“No,” Cord said quickly. “It’s not that. I just --- I don’t know. I was about to answer and then I looked at you and lost track of what I was saying. All this mating response magic is messing with my head and my eyes.”

“Maybe I can put the food in the kitchen inside the house?” Duke offered up. “That’s usually where most people want it.”

“In the witch room, if we’re going to talk about spirits,” Cord said.

“The what?” Duke blinked.

“It’s easier just to show you,” Cord sighed as if Duke had asked him what color the sky was. “Come on.”

He kept a hold of my sticky-noted hand, pulling my palm against his and trapping the note between our flesh. Goosebumps rose up on my arms at his touch as if our magics reached out for each other through our very pores. Duke shrugged and followed us up the rest of the walkway.

“The witch room is a well-known secret at our house,” Cord whispered to me.

“I’ve heard of the concept before. A lot of times such rooms are given code names, right?”

“Exactly, but Starry’s a dragon and after the Yule party there’s no hiding from anyone that he’s a witch. So, he doesn’t bother with code names,” Cord explained as he opened the door with his free hand. “Wipe your feet.”

We all did so before entering the house. Starry’s house was as cozy as I expected it to be. The whole place smelled of herbs, tea, and some sort of wilder magic I couldn’t put my finger on.

“Harpy magic,” Cord answered, picking up my thoughts over the group link.

“That’s probably it,” I nodded, but he could’ve told me it was the spirit of a pixie who died inside a plum pudding, and I’d have believed him.

I didn’t get a chance to look around the house much as Cord led us to the witch room, because it was hard to take my eyes off him. If I looked around, he might’ve spirited himself away again.

“Will Starry get mad if we eat in his special room?” Duke asked as Cord opened the door.

“Give me a minute to pick up the books,” Cord said. “As long as we don’t stain them up, no one will care.”

Duke waited on the other side of the door, but since Cord didn’t let go of my hand, I followed him around as he picked up the books scattered over the sofa and floor with one hand. He handed them to me one by one and I held them against my chest with my free arm until they were all picked up. Then we dumped them on an empty reading table on the far side of the room.

“You can just live the rest of your life with one hand. You don’t need to use the other,”my wolf said into my thoughts.

We sat on the floor and Duke opened all the to-go containers and passed out biodegradable, single use forks. None of us said anything for a long moment. Cord’s eyes met mine and I sank into them. His magic brushed against my skin as he took off his shoes and then took off mine too. Duke followed suit.

“We probably should’ve taken them off before we came in here, but I wasn’t thinking,” Cord shrugged. “Just stack them by the door.” He handed off our shoes to Duke who was closest to the exit.

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